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Anthropologist Hugh Raffles uncovers the dramatic lives and deaths of insects in his new book Insectopedia, from cricket fighting in Shanghai to the Japanese trend of keeping beetles as pets.
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A formidable opponent for fishermen and an easy-to-raise source of food, the dominion of the Rainbow Trout has spread to every continent except Antarctica, explains Anders Halverson, author of An Entirely Synthetic Fish.
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Historian Caroline Alexander, author of The War the Killed Achilles, deconstructs The Iliad as an unconventional epic of war.
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Lewis talks with Bill Radke about the day jobs of famous writers, including William Faulkner's tenure as the "worst postmaster in this history of Ole Miss"
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Lewis Lapham speaks with Timothy McBain of TomDispatch about the process of putting together an issue of Lapham's Quarterly.
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Superior weaponry doesn't always make for a successful empire explains historian Daniel R. Headrick in his book Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present.
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Civilizations have risen and fallen over access to the world's great oceans and waterways. Steven Solomon traces the history of this essential molecule in his book Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization.
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David Priestland recounts the sweeping history of the far-reaching movement that shaped the twentieth century in his new book The Red Flag: A History of Communism.
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Robert Krulwich is the host of WNYC's Radiolab and is a correspondent for NPR's science desk. He reads Abraham's sacrifice of Issac from the Book of Genesis.
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The desire to possess the skulls of the famous led to the robbery of the graves of Haydn, Bethoveen, and Goya. Colin Dickey recounts these tales in Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius.